An investigation into aspects of rate-independent single crystal plasticity

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The objective of the dissertation is to compare various algorithms for rate-independent single-crystal plasticity restricted to the infinitesimal case. The rate-independent case presents significant numerical challenges such as ill-conditioning and non-smoothness. The majority of the algorithms in the literature are heuristic and their accuracy, stability and performance not immediately clear. Other algorithms are more mathematically sound but computationally inefficient. This dissertations aims to provide a clear understanding of the algorithms, their implementation within a non-linear finite element code, and a comparison of the computational efficiency